AN EDITOR’S WIFE

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4467, 21 September 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

AN EDITOR’S WIFE

The girl who marries an editor should possess her soul in patience, and, like the lady in the Proverbs, find 'her com* fort in “looking well to the ways of her household.” She must not, like Blanche Amory, require the de grandes emotions, or have a stormy soul; for these things demand the attention of a thoroughly unoccupied husband.. She must not bo vain of her accomplishments, for her husband will, think nothing of going to sleep during her most masterly efforts at Mozart or Chopin. She will gradually, accustom, herself to regard her music in the humbler light of a soothing soporific—a salve for her editorial martyr, just returned to her from the rack of office work, the crushing Juggernaut of politics. She must not rebel U, like the husband in “Elizabeth*; Ger-

man Garden,” he fail “to speak a single whole sentence in three weeks,” and she must expect but few endearments and relaxations- An editor does not as a rule bring his wife home enticing parcels or Covent Garden bouquets. His wife must endure his absence for at least thirteen hours out of the twenty-four, and must tolerate the fact that his meals, his waking and sleeping hours are all extraordinary and irregular. When he comes back to dinner an hour late owing to the stray call of some belated lunatic at his office, she must bear murmuring complaints of the over-cook-ed dinner. She must resign herself to the fact that her husband has barmy time to notice her, or her toilettes; she may even wear the same dress for six months, and if there happens to be a strike on, or a colonial war, or even a new Budget, it will matter little, for his eyes are fixed, so to speak, on Barnoboola Gha all through three courses and a. dessert. Like Trollope’s hero of The Threa Clerks,” “his heart was in his omoe, his heart is always there,” and his wife only gets the reversion of his mind. His whole attention is never yours, for even when you are doing your best to entertain him in your poor way his brow will be corrugated by an impending libel case or a new linotype, or twenty million things. There is, however, one exception to this rule. If he comes in at half-past three in the morning, filled with woe 0 r the prospect of a European war. his wife must be ready to soothe and sympathise. “My dear, an editor’s wife of some thirty years standing once said to me, “Thomas has told me all I know of politics when he came homo in the early dawn and the sparrows are twittering.” Poor woman! What dismal associations these spar, rows must always have for her! The editorial husband is, as a rule, less communicative by day; for if his wife then venture a political question, he will probably crush her by remarking, “Why. don’t you ever read your paper? It comes every morning.” A girl destined t 0 ho the wife of an editor should not he afraid of. burglars, for it will be her sad fate to keep the front door unbolted till her spouse lets himself gently in at unearthly hours with his latch-key. If socially inclined she must early make up her mind go everywhere alone—or else stay at home. If she and her husband do by any strange chance go out to dinner together she n®ver sees him after they sit down, for he goes on to the office, and she must return alone, with the latchkey and eighteen pence tied up in the corner of her handkerchief, and' maybe, a kicking handsome horse and a tipsy driver, to her lonely abode. It may be said in extenuation of the' editor’s many grievances that, 8 o far as he is concerned, he occupies, so to speak, a throne far above his fellow men—he is acquainted with every topic of the day; every hook worth reading passes under his notice; his political opinions are looked for eagerly and read by thousands. Truly, “the pen is mightier than the sword!”

The girl who marries an.editor must be either remarkably thiok-skinned or else be firmly resolved to live her own life and have only her own friends. She must resolve sternly to ignore the crushing responsibilities of office, which offer, as far as he is concerned, no compensations. She must be a world unto herself. capable of enduring much solitude, even 0 f enjoying her life in a kind of lonely and enchanted palace, to which her mysterious, and fairy prince only returns with a latch-key in the dark.